Magill's Survey of Cinema; 6/15/1995

Jerzy Skolimowski is one of the prominent filmmakers of the European ``new cinema,'' or ``New Wave,'' of the 1960's. He is also the only one of the young, talented Polish filmmakers who emerged at the threshold of the decade to assert himself during the 1960's. His friend, the slightly older Roman Polanski, left Poland soon after making his first feature, and the younger Krzysztof Zanussi made ``auteur'' television films throughout the 1960's, completing his first feature only in 1969. It was during this time that Skolimowski decided to leave Poland, after his RECE DO GORY (1967; HANDS UP) was withheld from distribution. Throughout the 1960's - the decade marked by the decline of the ``Polish Film School,'' by the death of Andrzej Munk, by the artistic crises of Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and by a general political atmosphere in the country favoring noncontroversial mediocrity at the expense of nonconformist imagination and sincerity - the films of Jerzy Skolimowski were a distinctly bright spot.

IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE is Skolimowski's first and one of his best Polish films. For many critics, it is his best film ever. It is perhaps also his most typical and revealing film, as it combines his main themes and his personal style with a youthful freshness and unpretentiousness. The film has become legendary: It was made in a way that reveals much about Skolimowski the man. Instead of waiting years for the opportunity to make his first feature film and wandering through bureaucratic labyrinths, Skolimowski resorted to the only form of independent production that was possible (though not quite legal) in a Communist country where the State administration has a strongly guarded monopoly on film production. During his final two years at the film academy, Skolimowski used every chance for making short exercise films, and even ends of stock used for camera and stock tests, to make bits of his feature without revealing his design. In those conditions he had no chance of using actors for the main parts other than himself and his wife, the actress Elzbieta Czyzewska. He not only directed and produced the film but also wrote the screenplay and dialogue and made all the set designs.(The shooting was made largely on location, in original and adapted interiors.) Yet even after the film was made, it was virtually impossible to get it released. The breakthrough came when, presented at the Festival of Student Films in Warsaw, the film was acclaimed by critics, who forced its release in art theaters.

IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE reveals Skolimowski as an auteur filmmaker, one for whom making films is not merely a profession but a highly personal artistic form of expression. Before entering the film academy, he was a successful poet, playwright, and scriptwriter. He coscripted Wajda's NIEWINNI CZARODZIEJI (1960; INNOCENT SORCERERS) and Polanski's NOZ W WODZIE (1962; KNIFE IN THE WATER) and was an amateur boxing champion. In all of his literary works he developed the themes which appear in a concentrated form in IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE, and which he continued to develop until the early 1970's. A central theme is that of a young man trying to find his way in life, revolting against the older generation and the social institutions created and dominated by it - all in the name of freedom, spontaneity, and sincerity. This theme is treated here in a typical New Wave style, with a disregard for classic cinematic structures. Such structures are replaced by an episodic narration, an open form, a highly personal, subjective style, and an ambiguity that permeates the characters as well as the world.

The protagonist, twenty-five-year-old Andrzej Leszczyc, is called to the district military commission to be examined and drafted for two years of military service. Until now, he has been exempt from active duty because, as a college student, he was subjected to a special military training program within the university. Now, however, he is expelled and loses the privilege. At the commission, he amazes everybody by his attitude: He does not present excuses but asks to be drafted. He will leave for the barracks by train the same evening. Until then, he will spend time doing errands, visiting several people, meeting others by chance, and trying to settle his affairs, at least for the time being. Through those loosely linked episodes, the viewer learns about his life. When he visits his wife (Elzbieta Czyzewska), one learns that they were married for two years but that the relationship did not work out, and the couple seem to be virtually strangers, both to each other and to themselves. Andrzej has a detached attitude toward life. He has been studying ichthyology, not because he is particularly interested in fish but because everything else seems to him equally irrelevant. He learns that his dog, which he forgot to inoculate, has rabies and must be destroyed. It is an extremely painful experience for Andrzej, and even though he seems to be casual about it in public, when he is on the street again, the viewer hears the magnified sounds of the veterinarian administering the lethal injection, covering the sounds of the traffic and completely filling the sonic dimension. By chance, Andrzej meets an old colleague from high school, who was the leader of the school chapter of the Communist Youth organization. Now, however, as a result of the liberalization in the post-Stanlinist era, he is engaged in a highly profitable private business and lives the life of a playboy. Andrzej meets a disabled war veteran, who tells him a moving story about his war heroism, but Andrzej discovers that the story is false and that the man never fought in the war. He meets some other people, is asked a few questions by a television reporter for a program about contemporary youth - and barely makes it to the station on time.

A summary cannot provide an adequate description of this film. The sense of IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE does not lie in the bare events, but in the way in which they are presented and narrated and in what the viewer makes of them. The events seem accidental and haphazard; one does not feel any structure, any iron necessity beyond them, nor have they the strength of dramatic confrontation. Perhaps the story could have been made out of any other day or days in the life of the protagonist. It is not for the sake of the bare plot that Skolimowski made this film.

The impact of the plot itself is lessened even further by its visible ambiguity. The motives of Andrzej are far from clear. For example, nothing explains his surprising willingness to be drafted. He does not want to flee anything or anybody, and he does not expect anything advantageous for himself from the service. On the contrary, he has a definite opinion about the stupidity and uniformity of military life. The way that Skolimowski suggests it is very characteristic of his style: The waiting recruits are shown a ludicrous, propagandistic film about the dangers of venereal diseases, and later, through the window, Andrzej sees an endless, seemingly mindless drill of soldiers. The protagonist makes no explicit statement on military life, but the way that he looks around and notices these details reveals to the viewer his state of mind.

Nor does one learn why Andrzej's marriage failed, and one can only speculate about his boyish emotional immaturity, about his horror of aging and of taking responsibility, about his cult of youth and independence, and about the hardships of student couples. One does not know the real reason that he dropped out from the university, since studies are free, provide social status, and Andrzej is bright enough to pass any examinations. What were his experiences with Stalinism, other than his resentment of the obvious duplicity of a former fiery activist turned salesman? One wonders why he neglected to inoculate his dog, since the animal seems to be the only creature in the world to which Andrzej is genuinely attached. One is incessantly puzzled by unexplained details, such as the small coffin being carried carefully on the stairs by two bizarre and not quite funereal-looking people, which could contain a child, a dog, or stolen or smuggled goods. This ambiguity is maintained throughout the film, and it is a distinctly clear strategy of Skolimowski, who, like other filmmakers of the New Wave, resented the dogmatism of the classic cinema, which, according to them, processed reality in order to make it fit the schematics. Skolimowski is open to reality, with all its unexpected twists and ambiguities. Believing that the world, and, for that matter, human beings, are complex, equivocal, and not easily reducible to clear-cut meanings and causal relations, he leaves to the viewer the task of decoding his vision. The world of Skolimowski seems to be so rich in possibilities that sometimes one is confused, not knowing which way the story will go. This confusion is created and maintained in the first shot, which presents the city before dusk. People are hurrying along the sidewalks; a streetcar passes; on the wall of a high-rise apartment building are two gigantic shadows of workers cast by an acetylene welding torch. This image is maintained for a long time, as if to suggest that anything may become the subject of the film.

Not only the first but all other shots as well are long. Altogether, IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE consists of thirty-nine shots. A moving camera seems to explore the world and present its rich complexity, which is not arbitrarily truncated either by a fixed point of view or by excessive cutting.

The important thing is that this ambiguity does not result in the creation of a general confusion which would frustrate the viewer. The intensity of the images is such that the film's vision has its own truth: As the viewer follows Andrzej through the day, Skolimowski's world builds up. One believes in it and is eager to get to know it and understand it, piecing it together from bits. The main source of the film's truth is Andrzej himself, and one soon feels that his portrayal is the main theme and subject of IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE. Even if one cannot fully understand and explain his feelings and his behavior, he is no more enigmatic than are most people whom one meets in life - or probably even less so, since he seems to embody many of characteristic features of his own generation. As Skolimowski employs his strategy of equivocality, the viewer must employ his own strategy of searching for clues and assembling the story.

Among the features of Andrzej that are particularly underlined by Skolimowski is his being at odds with society. He is obviously ill-adapted to life, and his contacts with institutions are usually a disaster. He was, and he still is, put off by the gap between the official form and the real content. School, college, politics, the army, and television propaganda give a feeling of duplicity, of double standards, of a facade - that is why, instead of joining society's institutions, he distrusts them deeply. That explains his detached attitude, which on several occasions may turn against him, as is the case with his dog. His decision to join the army can be seen as yet another provocation - perhaps resulting from a belief that civilian life is not worth the effort of fighting off the draft. Perhaps he wants to escape freedom, which seems illusory to him. Andrzej has nothing in life to hold to and does not believe that society can offer him anything. One Polish critic very justly called IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE ``a portrait of a generation without a place to live,'' which in the Polish context is true both figuratively and literally. Andrzej lives in a small, drab room and has no hope that society will offer him a fair chance of making his place in life.

Being a nonconformist, however, Andrzej does not revolt. He does not fight for anything but rather gives up and withdraws into himself. He loves freedom but is ready to give up the hopeless fight for it and settle for an interior sense of freedom and independence. He possesses a competitive spirit but refuses to compete in standard fields. He is fascinated by youth, by his healthy body, and he is afraid of getting old. One learns much about him by listening to what he says - or, rather, what he does not say - to the television interviewer.

Although typical for many twenty-five-year-olds in many countries, Andrzej is emblematic of a young Pole of the early 1960's. Skolimowski describes well the situation of a young man living in a highly structured and regulated society in which institutions are everything and an individual's desire for freedom must bring him to the margins of that society. The post-Stanlinist hangover is coupled with the conviction that the older generation, which fought the war and was in full activity when Communism was installed in Poland, has decided the shape of life for the nation and will not let the younger generation have its say. From this perspective, the episode with the fake (or simply mythomaniac), disabled ``war veteran'' is doubly poignant.

An important and startling clue is provided by a poem that is recited over a loudspeaker: The poem was written by Skolimowski himself. It tells about someone who forfeited his years, his youth, and his love, and now, with a tight throat, he wants to readjust life and ends ... adjusting the knot of his tie. Among the long line of revolted and frustrated nonconformists brought to life by the young filmmakers of the 1960's, Andrzej is distinguished by his own ambiguity and by the sarcastic distance that Skolimowski employs in portraying him. The title of the film itself is obviously an ironic one.

Skolimowski's vision in IDENTIFICATION MARKS--NONE is highly subjective: The world is presented through the eyes of the protagonist while he is making a sort of a balance of his life. Skolinowski is sometimes tempted by a balan formal subjectivity - for example, in the scene in which Andrzej enters an apartment in which a girl takes a bath behind the open door of the bathroom. The camera, identifying with the point of view of the hero, moves quickly from the view of the bathroom toward the wall, wanders a few moments around the apartment, and returns to the girl when she is already dressed in a gown. The same pursuit of subjectivity provides a breathtaking scene (quite innovative at that time). The camera, from Andrzej's point of view, runs along the corridor, then, always in one shot, storms down four flight of stairs. This ``Lady of the Lake'' technique is, however, used rarely - more often the subjectivity is achieved by the creation of the vision of the world subjectively perceived and felt by the protagonist.

Andrzej might embody a lost and unfulfilled generation, a case of egotism and self-pity, or a combination of elements. Skolimowski does not give a precise explanation of his protagonist's behavior, limiting himself rather to a brilliant portrait, made with tenderness and with a dose of irony.

Review Sources:
The New York Times: CXIV, September 13, 1965, p.4
Variety: CCXL, September 15, 1965, p.

Rather than wait for what might be years to receive government support, Jerzy Skolimowski made this, his first film, during his final two years at the film academy in Poland. He used class assignments, and even ends of stock from camera tests, to make parts of the feature without revealing his design. Skolimowski and his wife play the main characters.